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Wisconsin Recall Blues

So Governor Scott Walker managed to keep his seat despite pissing off half the people in Wisconsin and even more in surrounding states. Tom Barrett managed to get 1.13 million votes. Now, if you consider the number of people who signed the petition to do a recall, that should give Barrett and automatic one million votes. One million people felt strongly enough to sign the petition, means one million people should show up to vote for Barrett. After that, there should have been at least 200,000 voters who walked in merely to get the I Voted sticker, and looked at the names of the candidates and thought to themselves, “Well, Barrett rhymes with Garrett and I sure do hate that Billy the Kid.” So there you have 1.2 million votes for Barrett. After that, it should have been a cake walk to get another 300,000 ballots cast in Barrett’s favor, what with Walker’s record of pissing everyone off and everyone he’s ever met being indicted. So what happened?

In the week before the election, reports of foul play began to surface. Apparently, many Wisconsinites received robocalls explaining that if they signed the recall petition, they didn’t have to vote. As an optimist, I have to think that anyone who could have been fooled by that wouldn’t have been able to get out of their footy pajamas in time to go vote anyway. No, they would have indeed been too engrossed in making macaroni art to even consider heading down to the polling station.

I’ve also heard tell of the voting machines tipping the scales in Walker’s favor, but if you’re going to tell me that there’s a conspiracy of that magnitude, don’t be wearing a Guy Fawkes mask while doing it. It somehow diminishes your credibility when you claim to be an anarchist and you’re wearing a mask bearing the likeness of a militant Catholic. And no, vaccines don’t cause autism, dickhead. An anarchist who takes medical advice from Jenny McCarthy. Fuck you! Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, Wisconsin.

So, they went ahead and ran the guy who lost to Walker last time; the guy who resides over the fourth poorest city in the country. After all this nasty business with the unions, they do a recall and dangle Barrett in front of voters saying “Hey, are you sure you don’t want him? Really sure? I mean, if you had any doubts last time, here’s your chance.” Perhaps the rest simply reconsidered. After all, Walker won in the first place fair and square, it would hardly be sporting to boot him out now. And maybe the protesters had such a good time in front of the capital two years ago, they wanted an excuse to do it all again.

So I guess what I wanted to say is, thanks for wasting everyone’s time, Wisconsin. Now get back to making cheese and stay the fuck off my TV.